The Infrastructure and Assets Group has completed a comparison of useful lives (the period that we expect a certain asset or group of assets to be fit for purpose before maintenance and/or replacement of the asset is required) and of the unit rates (the costs attributed to certain activities) used in budgeting and planning for a range of asset maintenance and replacement activities.
This project provides details of useful life and unit rates used within each council and allows comparison to occur with a view to improving consistency and identifying significant variations between councils. It provides a mechanism for considering whether variations are justified for individual councils and to understand the financial and policy impact of any variations upon councils and to recommend potential next steps.
A single document that allows each council to compare their asset life and unit rate assumptions with those of the other ERA councils provides, at the very least, provide some assurance and validation of those assumptions that will in turn assist with any auditing concerns.